Boys Life

and a dark brown shirt. He looked like one of the November hills come to life, ripped loose from its bedrock to roll across the earth. He wore a toothy grin, his bald head with its tuft of gray hair gleaming with scalp oil. He breathed hard, winded from the exertion of leaving the car. “Do it, boys,” he said between wheezes.
    Wade leveled the rifle. Bodean cocked his pistol. They aimed at the sheriff’s car and started shooting.
    I almost left my skin. The bullets hit the two front tires of Sheriff Amory’s car and knocked them flat. Then Wade and Bodean took aim at Dad’s truck even as Dad threw the gearshift into reverse and tried to skid the truck out of danger. It was fruitless; the two front tires blew, and the truck was left lame and rocking on its shocks.
    “Let’s talk some business, Sheriff Junior!” Biggun thundered.
    Sheriff Amory didn’t get out. Donny’s grinning face was pressed up against the window glass like a kid looking at fresh cakes in a bakery. I glanced over to see what Mr. Cathcoate was doing. But the Candystick Kid wasn’t there anymore.
    “Bus ain’t comin’ for a while!” Biggun said. He leaned into the Cadillac’s rear seat and came out holding a double-barreled shotgun in one ham-sized hand and in the other a camouflage shoulder bag. He put the bag on top of the Caddy’s roof, unzipped it, and reached in. “Funniest damn thing, Sheriff Junior!” He broke the shotgun open, brought out two shells from the ammo bag, and pushed them in. Then he snapped the weapon shut again. “Damn bus had two flats ’bout six miles down Route Ten! Gonna be hell fixin’ them big mothers!” He rested his weight against the Caddy, making it groan and sag. “Always hated changin’ tires, myself.”
    A gun spoke: crack crack!
    The Cadillac’s rear tires exploded. Biggun, for all his bulk, jumped two feet in the air. He made a noise that was a combination of hootenanny yodel and opera aria. Wade and Bodean whirled around. Biggun came down with a concrete-cracking concussion.
    Smoke drifted around a figure that stood behind the Cadillac, next to Mr. White’s parked tow truck. The Candystick Kid was holding his pistol in his right hand.
    “What the fuckin’ hell of a shit-!” Biggun raged, his face swelling up with blood and the tip of his beard quivering.
    Sheriff Amory jumped from his car. “Owen! I told you I didn’t want you around here!”
    The Candystick Kid ignored him, his cool gaze riveted to Biggun. “Know what this is called, Mr. Blaylock?” He suddenly spun his pistol around and around his trigger finger, the sun glinting off the blued metal, and he delivered the gun to its butt-first position in the left-sided holster with a shricking noise of supple leather. “This is called,” he said, “a standoff.”
    “Standoff, my ass!” Biggun shouted. “ Nail him, boys!”
    Wade and Bodean opened fire as Sheriff Amory yelled, “No!” and brought up the rifle he’d been holding at his side.
    The Candystick Kid might have been an old, wrinkled man, but whatever was in him that had made him the Kid now showed its mettle. He dived behind the tow truck as bullets crashed through the windshield and pocked the hood. Sheriff Amory squeezed off two shots, and the Cadillac’s windshield blew out. Wade yelped and went for the ground, but Bodean turned around with fury contorting his face and his pistol popped. Sheriff Amory’s hat flew off his head like a pigeon. The next shot from the sheriff’s rifle put a part in the side of Bodean’s crew cut, and Bodean must’ve felt the heat of its passage because he hollered “Yow!” and dropped to a snake’s view.
    Mr. Marchette climbed out of the sheriff’s car, holding a pistol. Dad scrambled out of the pickup truck and threw himself to the pavement, and a thrill of mingled pride and fear went through me as I saw he was gripping a gun, too. The Moon Man stayed in the truck and ducked his head, only his top hat showing.
    Boom! the double-barreled shotgun said. The tow truck shook, pieces of glass and metal flying off it. Biggun was on his knees beside the Cadillac, and it came to me that he shouldn’t destroy that tow truck because he was going to need it to stand up again.
    “Daddy!” Donny shouted from the sheriff’s car. “Get me outta this, Daddy!”
    “Ain’t nobody takin’ what belongs to me!” Biggun yelled back. He fired off a shell at the sheriff’s car, and the grille exploded. Steaming radiator water spewed